As a final post to this thread that I started... after getting confirmed on a flight from DXB - JFK on the A380, I remained on the waitlist for the DXB-YYZ flight (which was my preferred routing). T-24 hours I did a search for award flights and found 1 seat popped up on the DXB-YYZ flight. Just like my original 'waitlist" -- I did not get any notification that there was a flight available. So, I called EK -- only to find out that the space I saw could not be seen by the agent -- it was apparently a phantom award seat. While I was on the call with the agent, the seat disappeared -- so the agent couldn't see what I had seen and claimed that it was likely a phantom seat. A few hours later, the seat was back -- so I called in again. The agent claimed there weren't any award seats -- but this time, I asked him to do a search and he found the same phantom seat that I was seeing on my end. He placed me on hold and was somehow able to confirm me on that seat. Not sure whether it was truly phantom or not but either way it was only because I called that I got the original DXB-JFK and then the DXB-YYZ flights.